If you’re in an airport and using the public Wi-Fi, chances are you are reading this post on your smartphone or tablet. And for 83 percent of you, this mobile device is either an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.

According to data compiled by Boingo Wireless, the company behind 60 airport hotspots and over 400,000 public hotspots worldwide, a dwindling number of users (41 percent) pull out their laptop at public hotspots, while most (59 percent) use a smartphone or a tablet.

This is a complete 180 from 2008 when the majority of people (88.5 percent) were rocking laptops and a small minority (11 percent) were cruising the internet using a mobile device.

And it’s iOS that rules the mobile roost on Boingo’s wireless network. Yes, the data shows that Android devices have tripled in number over the last year, but its 11 percent share pales in comparison to the 83 percent commanded by the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

So what are people doing with their mobile devices on these public Wi-Fi hotspots? Boingo thinks most people are streaming music and video because data usage by mobile devices is skyrocketing. In 2011, users are pulling down 0.89MB of data per minute, up from a measly 0.37 MB in 2009. A little less than a megabyte per minute is not a lot, but it may be enough to secretly watch Rebecca Black on your iPhone while you wait for your plane. [Boingo Wireless]

If you were still wondering why Netflix chose right now to split apart its unlimited DVD and streaming movie plans you need look no further than the just released Q2 financial report. According to the numbers, 75 percent of new subscribers were picking streaming only plans, while the total number of people on the hybrid DVD / streaming plan had actually decreased slightly, even as it breached 25 million subscribers worldwide. Of course, it did notice the intense backlash to the new rates, but predicts that after the hit of cancellations by the end of the third quarter it will still have 22 million people subscribed to streaming, 15 million total subscribed to DVDs, and about 12 million customers with both. Waiting on that Facebook integration? Don’t hold your breath, while the new features are due to launch soon in Canada and Latin America, it claims ambiguous wording in the Video Privacy Protection Act is holding things back domestically.

Other details include confirmation it will not look into purchasing Hulu Plus, and that it’s still negotiating a renewal of its deal with Starz. While the DVD business may have peaked, it’s not quite dead yet and Netflix indicated it will start marketing that feature again in the fourth quarter. Click the source link to paw through the PDF yourself, we’ll be keeping an ear tuned to the investor call later to find out exactly what the company’s executives are thinking.

Whether you believe we’re living in a post-PC world or not, there’s no denying the overwhelming growth of tablets in the past few years. Just this March, IDC put out figures saying 2010 saw the sale of 18 million tablets, but despite the recent boom, the outfit’s now reporting a 28 percent drop in tablet shipments in Q1 2011, bringing first quarter worldwide shipments to 7.2 million. IDC’s latest report points to “slower consumer demand, overall economic conditions, and supply-chain constraint,” but nonetheless estimates that total tablet sales will reach 53.5 million by year’s end, up from IDC’s original estimate of 50.4 million. Once again, Apple’s come out on top of the slate game, with the iPad 2 leading the market, despite its own dip in shipments. E-readers have apparently also seen a decline in the first quarter, with shipments dipping to 3.3 million units. Despite a slow start to the year, however, IDC’s optimistic about future sales, but you don’t have to take our word for it — full PR awaits you after the break.

36 years ago, Stephen Spielberg released Jaws during a traditionally quiet time of the year for the box office. It took in seven million dollars that opening weekend, and became the highest grossing film of all time until Star Wars debuted two years later. What followed was a new era of Hollywood, a period in which the summer quarter would account for 40 percent of the entire year’s box office earnings.

It also began the era of extreme (read: shameless) Hollywood marketing. On May 6, 2011 Thor was released, grossing 65 million dollars in its first weekend, and going on to earn more than 430 million dollars worldwide. We’re now deep into the summer blockbuster season.

So it got me wondering: are major studios using their mega movies to drive traffic to their websites?

Over the last two years, it looks like they’ve rarely gotten more than a million unique visitors in a month, with one glaring exception: Warner Brothers, which consistently gets over 2 million UVs a month. Half-Blood Prince was the second highest grossing film of 2009 behind movie mammoth Avatar, and Sherlock Holmes was at number 8. Because these films were driving WB’s traffic up so much, why weren’t other studios benefiting from their movies’ hype? Avatar is the highest grossing film of all time, but it did nothing for Fox’s UVs in December 2009. I realized that unlike WB, other studios don’t host their movies on subdomains—they set up new sites specifically for each movie.

So how do these sites stack up? Here are five of the six top grossing movies domestically this year. Each has a significant spike in daily reach right around their release date.

After just a few days, though, the sites become almost obsolete. Even The Hangover Part II, WB’s subdomain, falls to almost nothing. So then what is it keeping Warner Bros. at the top of the internet game? If it’s not blockbusters bringing in hundreds of millions, what is it?

Ellen DeGeneres’ show seems to drive about half of Warner Bros’ traffic.

36 years ago, Stephen Spielberg released Jaws during a traditionally quiet time of the year for the box office. It took in seven million dollars that opening weekend, and became the highest grossing film of all time until Star Wars debuted two years later. What followed was a new era of Hollywood, a period in which the summer quarter would account for 40 percent of the entire year’s box office earnings.

It also began the era of extreme (read: shameless) Hollywood marketing. On May 6, 2011 Thor was released, grossing 65 million dollars in its first weekend, and going on to earn more than 430 million dollars worldwide. We’re now deep into the summer blockbuster season.

So it got me wondering: are major studios using their mega movies to drive traffic to their websites?

Over the last two years, it looks like they’ve rarely gotten more than a million unique visitors in a month, with one glaring exception: Warner Brothers, which consistently gets over 2 million UVs a month. Half-Blood Prince was the second highest grossing film of 2009 behind movie mammoth Avatar, and Sherlock Holmes was at number 8. Because these films were driving WB’s traffic up so much, why weren’t other studios benefiting from their movies’ hype? Avatar is the highest grossing film of all time, but it did nothing for Fox’s UVs in December 2009. I realized that unlike WB, other studios don’t host their movies on subdomains—they set up new sites specifically for each movie.

So how do these sites stack up? Here are five of the six top grossing movies domestically this year. Each has a significant spike in daily reach right around their release date.

After just a few days, though, the sites become almost obsolete. Even The Hangover Part II, WB’s subdomain, falls to almost nothing. So then what is it keeping Warner Bros. at the top of the internet game? If it’s not blockbusters bringing in hundreds of millions, what is it?

Ellen DeGeneres’ show seems to drive about half of Warner Bros’ traffic.

Figuring out where you next adventure will be can be tough. Whether you are just looking for something fun to do this Saturday or something a bit more broad like a trip to a different country, Everytrail.com is an awesome tool for those who like to get out and go.

Everytrail.com takes geo-tagged information from mobile devices and Garmin GPS units to create an interactive map of trip you or someone else has taken, and once uploaded to their website you can add photos and commentary to your route and share it online for anyone else in the world to download, so they can relive the exact same adventure you did.

The online tool is super easy for creating a route yourself, but if finding a new thing to do yourself is more your style, they have a huge database of thousands routes worldwide. You can search by location, or activity, making it super easy to find something to do no matter where you are. (Here’s a route I uploaded.)

About Me

Dr. Augustine Fou is an expert in digital strategy and social media marketing, with over 15 years of in-the-trenches, hands-on experience. He now serves as digital strategy advisor to global brands and their agencies shifting dollars more aggressively into digital channels.